Burying Thatcher, Exhuming Neruda

Margaret Thatcher is dead.

She is dead and I'm once again reminded of the saying that while the good that people do dies with them the evil they've done lives on. (Or something like that.) Together with her ideological soul mate, Ronald Reagan, Thatcher was largely responsible for leading the global shift toward neoliberalism during the 1980s. True to her legacy, Thatcher is to receive a state funeral at public expense even as austerity measures in Britain have scaled back student aid and public assistance for the poor.

While official Britain prepares to bury Thatcher and right-wingers mourn the world over, in Chile a judge has ordered the exhumation and autopsy of diplomat, statesman, and poet Pablo Neruda. Neruda died in 1973 of what was believed to be complications from prostate cancer several weeks after the Chilean military overthrew the elected administration of socialist President Salvador Allende.

Opponents of the military regime in Chile, which was presided over by Augusto Pinochet, a man much admired by Margaret Thatcher, have charged that Neruda's death was caused or hastened by the military due to Neruda's left-wing politics and support for Allende. If this was the case, Neruda's demise would be simply one more murder among the thousands committed by the Chilean military in the immediate aftermath of the 1973 coup.

It's hard to say what will be accomplished by reexamining Neruda's death, save to quiet the historical record. That Neruda's life and career ended as Thatcher's career was on the rise is a bitter juxtaposition. Neruda was a man of humane letters, with all the connotations that that adjective carries, as well as a leader who sought peace and justice for those whom it was in short supply. Thatcher, on the other hand, represented the backlash from a lower middle class opposed to social change, petty, grasping, resentful people who know the price of everything and the value of nothing. The Iron Lady was in fact no lady, but rather a crass bounder who believed that the public good demanded enriching oneself at the expense of others.

The world will be a better place when it produces more Nerudas and fewer Thatchers. But while Neruda’s memory lives on in the hearts of progressives, it is Thatcher’s which will cast an ominous shadow over the world for a long time to come. For that we are all the poorer.

© 2013 The Unassuming Scholar

 

Stultus Valley Days - I Make a New Start

First post in a recurring series

I got an email a while back from a friend I hadn’t heard from in a long time, informing me that a mutual acquaintance from Stultus Valley had passed away. 

Stultus Valley…God, hearing that name takes me back!  I’d only lived and worked there a short time, less than two years in all, but the experience left a lasting impression.

I landed in Stultus Valley after the Great Recession very nearly ended my academic career before it could begin.  I was working toward my doctorate at a research university when budget cuts eliminated my teaching fellowship and with it my ability to cover tuition and expenses.  I tried, unsuccessfully, to land an adjunct position that would have kept me in the game for the time being.

Since I enjoy eating and having a roof over my head I clearly needed to get a job, even if that meant getting a “straight” job.  Fortune soon smiled upon me.  Scouring the interwebs for a viable situation within a 50-mile radius of where I was living, I found one.  On Craigslist, no less.  It was a civil service post with a social services agency in a town called Linden.  I’d never heard of Linden even though it was only 48 miles away according to Google Maps. 

A few mouse clicks later I discovered Linden, population 650, was located in the remote Stultus Valley.  Remote…and yet still within my geographical distance criteria.  Intrigued, I uploaded my resume. 

To my great surprise, I was notified just days later that I had received a civil service exam waiver and when was I available for an interview? 

My luck held as I made my journey through a light snowfall to Linden.  The interview was brief, but pleasant.  I’d gathered what scant data I could concerning Stultus County and its social services programs and used it to good effect answering the questions posed to me. 

I’m not much of a charmer usually, but I clearly made a good impression that day.  Within an hour of leaving the interview, I got a message on my voicemail telling me I’d landed the job.  As it was the best (and only) prospect I had at the moment, I accepted.  What else was I going to do?

And so, inside of two weeks, my life changed completely as I blindly followed my chosen course.  I withdrew from graduate school and moved into a rented house in Linden. 

I started off with enthusiasm and hope at my new job.  My naïve optimism soon foundered as I got to know my new neighbors, a breed of folks I found at once strange and familiar.  Stultus Valley and its residents were to leave a lasting impression, memories which I now feel compelled to revisit.

Next installment: Meeting the Neighbors

© 2013 The Unassuming Scholar

Feeling the Pain

The Cyprus bailout is going forward, with a modification or two.  Fortunately for Cypriot workers, their bank deposits will be safe, at least for now.   The imposed deposit tax will apparently only affect large accounts.

Meanwhile, the banks in Cyprus remain closed…

Austerity

The European Union and the International Monetary Fund have agreed to assist the cash-strapped government of Cyprus with an emergency infusion of € 13 billion.

Naturally, there are strings attached.  In this case, the austerity measures demanded by the EU and the IMF include a 10% forfeiture of savings bank deposits.

The bankers and politicians fail.  Innocent people pay the price, as they have throughout the global economic crisis.  First, they lose their equity in stocks and in their own homes.  Now they are being penalized again for their own hard work and thrift.

And so the greatest wealth transfer in modern history continues apace.  How soon before austerity comes home to roost in the United States?  How will we respond? 

I truly want to believe that there would finally be a backlash against the plutocrats, a true occupation of Wall Street, but I cannot.  Sadly, the public will do what it’s done since 2008.  It will blame the Democrats, shiftless welfare cheats, and spendthrifts who owe more than they can ever pay.  In the end our false consciousness, our willingness to be capitalism’s useless idiots, will be our undoing.  We’ll lick our masters' boots even as they kick us into our graves...

© 2013 The Unassuming Scholar

Please Back Off

I’ve just finished watching Won’t Back Down, last year’s movie about parents who defy the odds to improve their kids’ education.

Won’t Back Down, financed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and businessman Philip Anschutz, promoted by Michelle Rhee, and touted by conservative school “reform” advocates, makes its point in a predictably hamfisted fashion so that even the densest teabilly Wal-Mart shopper can figure it out.  I thoroughly hated it, as I expected to.  The story was inspired by a real-life incident a couple of years ago where parents used California’s parent-trigger law to convert a failing public school into a charter institution.

The producers signed a raft of well-known names for the project.  Maggie Gyllenhaal plays the main character, Jamie, while Viola Davis plays Jamie’s ally, Nona.  Clearly the project was well-financed, considering they also brought on Ving Rhames and Holly Hunter. 

Despite the strong cast, I was underwhelmed by the acting.  There was very little chemistry among the actors, and I just wasn’t convinced by their performances.  Also, and I can’t explain why, the Gyllenhaal siblings have always rubbed me the wrong way.  And so I couldn’t help but chuckle at thought of Maggie Gyllenhaal, a paragon of liberal smugness, cynically accepting the lead role in a right-wing propaganda flick.  Really, Maggie?  Did you need the money that badly?

Back to the film: Jamie is a plucky single mom who works two jobs while raising a daughter with learning disabilities.  Frustrated by her little girl’s lack of progress in school, she joins up with burned out elementary school teacher Nona after discovering a loophole in the law which allows parents and teachers to take over a school if it is failing.

Gyllenhaal and the scriptwriters self-consciously strive to imbue Jamie with an air of blue collar authenticity.  Jamie speaks in malapropisms while letting her daughter watch TV and munch Snickers bars after school.  She’s awed by Nona’s neatly kept home.  Her sense of boundaries is poor at best as she importunes parents, teachers, and administrators alike to do what’s right for her daughter. 

Won’t Back Down is a mostly conventional buddy film / fight-the-system tale.  Predictably, it concludes with the obligatory corny feel-good scene I remember in every Eighties inspiring teacher movie from Stand and Deliver to The Dead Poets’ Society.  But that’s not its worst sin.  At least twice in the film, Jamie quotes Gandhi’s purported aphorism, “Be the change you wish to see in the world,” as justification for her efforts.  It’s like when wingnuts such as Bill O’Reilly or Glenn Beck quote Martin Luther King; it just comes off as vaguely sacrilegious.

At its heart, Won’t Back Down is an odious anti-union, anti-public education screed.  Throughout the movie, Jamie and Nona are stymied at every turn by two-dimensional cardboard cutout foes in the form of a sclerotic school bureaucracy, a do-nothing board of education, and a union which protects incompetent teachers through tenure.  (A “job for life after two years,” as one character puts it, perpetuating a cherished conservative myth.)  Unionized teachers, we’re given to understand, have no incentive to educate beyond collecting their inflated taxpayer underwritten salaries.  

While Won’t Back Down is a poorly made hack piece which will be soon forgotten, I wish I could say the same for the movement that spawned it.  We are on a slippery slope toward school privatization and teacher deprofessionalization because of the moneyed conservative forces working toward this end.  The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is one well-known culprit.  The Walton Family Foundation and the Hewlett Foundation are two others.

But the worst of the rogue’s gallery of charitable foundations, to my mind, is the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation.  Mr. Broad, who made his fortune in insurance and by building innumerable subdivisions of tacky tract houses, did what any other egotistical plutocrat would do when faced with the prospect of paying taxes.  He simply donated a fair chunk of his wealth to a charitable foundation he created then devoted himself to doling it out as a means of wielding power.  Among its programs, the Broad Foundation sponsors an “academy” to train school administrators for the new reality of K-12 education, which is that public schools must produce a uniform “product” regardless of students’ widely varying individual aptitudes.  The test will tell: Poor scores equal unemployed teachers.

Eli Broad suffers from the same conceit other wealthy individuals share.  Because he was successful at business, this makes him an expert in every other field of endeavor.  This is especially true when it’s a service provided by the public sector.  As we all know, government’s sole raison d’être is to siphon off the hard earned wealth of job creating entrepreneurs.  Therefore, it can only be made efficient when business people either privatize, or at least apply private sector practices to, government work.  (Never mind the non sequitur underneath this assumption; there’s no moneymaking potential in taking the liberal arts courses where you would learn what one is.)

The Broad Foundation is gradually making inroads into higher education.  My alma mater recently opened a new field house built with money donated by the Broads.  To my deep distaste, the president of the endowment foundation of the college where I work is the CEO of a real estate development company owned by Eli Broad.  I believe these are harbingers of a larger trend.  It won’t be long before pressure is brought to bear on college presidents and boards of trustees to scale back or eliminate general education requirements and non-vocational majors in favor of the University of Phoenix model of workforce training.  It’s never a good idea to encourage the life of the mind when the kind of people you want working for you are narrowly trained technicians who don’t ask a lot of probing questions.

If there is a hell, I hope there is a special corner reserved for Eli Broad.  As it is, the evil he’s done in his lifetime will be perpetuated through his foundation.   And I am not one of those progressives who put their faith in the secular eschatology of revolution.  Sometimes the bad guys win.  The hardest part is when everyone around you is convinced they’re the good guys and are cheering them on to victory.

Just like in Won’t Back Down. 

     

© 2013 The Unassuming Scholar

Don't Call Your Soul Your Own

The customer service policy of UK-based quick-service dining chain Pret à Manger has made the news this week.  Hardly Page 1 stuff, but interesting in its way.

Apparently, Pret à Manger enforces cheerfulness among its employees by sending a mystery shopper to each outlet once a week.  If the anonymous visitor is greeted with sufficient obsequiousness, every worker at the store gets a cash bonus. 

How nice.  Because, after all, I know I want to be treated slavishly whenever I stop in someplace for a cup of coffee.  A fleeting encounter in the bustle of the day with someone I’ll likely never meet again, an exchange forgotten by me almost as soon as it ended, becomes an elaborate three-minute playlet of manners in which the other person’s livelihood depends upon how well he or she projects friendliness.

“Pret” arrived in the States a while back, I’m told, but it has yet to open any stores on the West Coast where I live.  But the chain’s effort to extract the last drop of cheerfulness from its low-wage workforce, described in The New Republic by Timothy Noah, demonstrates late capitalism’s quest to not simply claim their employees’ physical and mental labor but to take hold of their inner lives as well.  (It comes as little surprise that McDonald’s--home of the original McJob--owns an equity share in Pret.)

I like courteous service as much as anyone.  I enjoy dealing with friendly people, provided the friendliness comes from the heart.  But even as civility erodes to nothing, it appears that its last remnants survive within the plastic confines of the food service industry.  Still, I'm not sure if the Pret model is universally appealing.  It certainly isn't for me.  I’m more partial to the efficient, even detached, service at the old school joints I haunt when I’m in the city.  Places where the waitstaff are clad in white jackets, the lighting is low, and the paneling dark.  Aside from the occasional night out, however, I prefer to dine at home. 

But Pret’s customer service policy is a manifestation of a broader trend in the service industries in which so many of us now toil and a dark harbinger of things to come.  No telling how this affects the worker internally.  Kids sick?  Not feeling well yourself?  Bills past due?  Car trouble?  Fight with your spouse?  Your dog died?  Tough luck; you’ll just have to smile and accept your lot as a member of the servant class. 

The work I do has its own emotional labor demands.  But I can’t imagine having continually to contort my affect so as to best please each individual I come in contact with.  

Timothy Noah is undoubtedly correct when he observes that this push toward agreeableness favors women over men given the lifelong cultural pressure on the former to be pleasing to others.  My ex-wife, the product of a culture where emotional reserve is considered a virtue, loves to mock American women’s exaggerated emotiveness.  (“H-i-i-i-i-i!  How are y-o-u-u-u-u!  It’s so good to s-e-e-e you!”  Always makes me laugh.)  Such displays can hardly be sincere, even among friends.

However, sincereity isn’t really the point, then, is it?  Good management practice nowadays dictates exerting as much control over the workers’ lives as can be legally managed.  There’s an element of dominance and submission creeping into the workplace that was unimaginable a generation ago.  And why not?  After all, self-actualization in our society is fully achieved only when one is in a position to exploit others.

And so the Pret à Manger story is simply another installment of a long-running drama in our economic race to the bottom.  Its main plot thread is trivialization of the individual.  The truest expression of depersonalization is when we are asked to alienate not only our time and skill, but our inner selves in the bargain.  The day will soon be upon us, I’m afraid, when we can no longer dare call our souls our own.  

  

© 2013 The Unassuming Scholar

Generation Gap

My HMO recently assigned me a new doctor.  Well, he actually wasn’t a doctor; he was a physician’s assistant.  This fact wasn’t a problem in itself.  But being a careful consumer of healthcare services in the information age, I researched his professional background online.  What I learned gave me pause.

It turns out that my primary care manager, to describe his role in insurance speak, was born in 1987.  I would be placing my health in the inexperienced hands and technology addled mind of a Millennial, and that would not do.  I called my HMO, told the customer service drone on the other end I wanted a new doc, and to my pleasant surprise I got my way.  My new “PCM” is an actual MD, and she was born in 1961.  Her professional record is substantial and, as far as I was able to find, unblemished.

Problem solved, at least for the time being.  I know that this conundrum will recur as the years progress.  Eventually, the professionals of my generation or earlier will have retired and my only choices for doctors, lawyers, and accountants will come from today’s young’uns.  I am dreading the prospect.

I never thought I would feel this way.  After all, I’ve worked with young people throughout my professional life as well as in my community service activities.  More importantly, I’m a little disappointed in my own kneejerk judgments in light of my own youthful frustrations with what I saw as my elders’ misperceptions of my Generation X peers.

If you look at media depictions of Gen X from the Eighties and Nineties, you would have trembled for the future.  Personally, I was a little mystified by them.  Even relatively sympathetic pop culture depictions of Xers, such as the movies Reality Bites, Clerks, or just about any of the early work of Richard Linklatter failed to reflect my subjective experiences as a teen and twentysomething.  Nor did the literary emanations of Chuck Palahnuik or even Douglas Coupland, who did the most to popularize the moniker “Generation X,” fully resonate with me even though I enjoyed them on their own merits. 

I suppose it was because by my late twenties, I was a married homeowner with a couple of kids and a middle management job I’d held since graduating college several years earlier.  I was neither a slacker nor a techie.  I wasn’t financially dependent on my parents as I tried to make my breakthrough as a—fill in the blank—poet, musician, film producer, artist, or dancer.  I suspect the majority of people my age didn’t have these experiences either, any more than the typical Baby Boomer was a hippie other than perhaps in the sartorial sense.

But as I contend with increasingly callow groups of kids each semester, my resentment waxes while my hopes for the future wane.  Official expectations don’t help matters.  The executive dean at my small campus suffers from a case of youth worship bordering at times on ephebophilia.  (The semi-fictional Dean Kimpossible who occasionally haunts my posts is an all-too-slight exaggeration of an all-too-real person.)  My job security as a non-tenured prof consequently demands that I cater to the shallow intelligence and short attention spans of my young charges.  Standing on principle can lead to unemployment in academia just as easily as it can anywhere else in this economy.  I may be craven, but I’m employed.

What I find so hard to grasp is not so much their dependence on technology, but the way in which they use it.  I was inspired by the role of social media—Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, et al.—in organizing and publicizing protest during the Arab Spring.  By contrast, Millennials at home use it to ceaselessly document the minutiae of their daily lives.  The outcome is that, to a larger degree than any generation before them, the present youth cohort exists within a self-referential bubble nearly impossible to burst.  Collective narcissism, if you will.  Already driven to distraction by their toys, our Millennials have had their self-esteem propped up by parents and the educational system to the point where failure really isn’t an option; accordingly, it has all but been eliminated as a possibility.

So, why did I refuse the boy-PA as my primary care doc?  Was it necessarily his youth that made me ask for someone else?  Well, let’s just say it was a matter of premonition and a desire to avert the inevitable just a little bit longer.  Many of my students are self-declared nursing majors or they plan to go into some other healthcare field.  A few of them have told me they’re pre-med.  I guess someone has to do it.  And while I know that the rigors of training will pull the bullshit card on a few of them, I also know that many will get through nonetheless.  (There’s also the possibility that the medical and nursing schools will eventually have their own versions of Dean Kimpossible, in which case we’re all screwed.  I try to push those thoughts aside for the sake of my own fragile peace of mind.)     

I have this recurring scenario which runs through my head whenever I think of the day when I must entrust my health to today’s youth.  It goes something like this: I’m undergoing a major procedure, let’s say open heart surgery.  My life depends upon a successful outcome.  And the next-oldest person in the OR is twenty years my junior…

Scene: The Operating Room. 

Time: The not-so-distant future. 

The PATIENT is already prepped and on the table.  Enter DR. CHELSEA, DR. TIFFANY, DR. TODD, NURSE BRITNEY, and NURSE JOSH.

DR. CHELSEA

Dr. Todd, is the patient anaesthetized and ready?

DR. TODD

Yeah, we good.

DR. TIFFANY

 Wait…Chelsea, have you, like, ever done this procedure before?  Do you even know what to do?

DR. CHELSEA

(Scoffs)

Huh, yeah!  I totally looked it up on Wikipedia!

 DR. TIFFANY

Oh, wow! That’s such a great idea!  I’m so doing that next time!

DR. CHELSEA

(Smugly)

Yeah, well, that’s why I was first in my medical school class!

 (Turns to NURSE BRITNEY)

Scalpel, please. 

(NURSE BRITNEY seems distracted as she hands DR. CHELSEA the scalpel.)

 What’s wrong, Britney?

 NURSE BRITNEY

(Tearfully, her voice quavering…)

It’s Dr. Jared.  He…he…unfriended me on Facebook!  I…I…just don’t know what to d-d-do…

(NURSE BRITNEY’s voice trails off into a sob.  She buries her face in her hands.  DR. CHELSEA, overcome with shock, suddenly drops the scalpel.  It lands with a clatter on the instrument tray.)

DR. CHELSEA and DR. TIFFANY

(In unison…)

Oh…my…god!!!  What a jerk!

DR. TODD

(Scoffing)

Huh, Jared!  What a pantload!  You could do way better.

NURSE BRITNEY

 (Sniffles, smiles behind her facemask)

Thanks, guys!

NURSE JOSH

(Abruptly, in an alarmed tone)

Aw, dude!  Check it out!  The patient’s vitals are slipping!

 DR.  CHELSEA

(She is clearly annoyed by the interruption)

Josh, WTF!  Can’t you see Britney’s upset?  Stop being such an asshole, okay?

 NURSE JOSH

I’m just sayin’…

 DR. TIFFANY

Yeah, well, save it for later.  The patient’s not going anywhere.  And Britney’s hurting now!

(There is a loud, steady tone as the PATIENT suddenly flatlines.  DR. CHELSEA turns around, clearly agitated.)

 DR. CHELSEA

What now? Can’t this guy leave us the hell alone for two seconds?

 NURSE JOSH

Aw, weak!  He’s dead!

DR. TODD

What a dick!  He could’ve at least waited a coupla minutes before bailin’ on us.  Epic fail!!!

DR. TIFFANY

Hey, wait, this means we’re done for the day!  Let’s go out tonight!

 DR.  CHELSEA

Omigod, that’s great!  I just bought a low-cut dress that totally shows off my new tattoo!

(DRS. CHELSEA and TIFFANY grasp each other by both hands.  They jump up and down in unison)

Omigod!  Omigod!  Omigod!  A-i-i-i-e-e-e-e-e!

NURSE BRITNEY

And let’s go to the beach tomorrow!  I just got a new thong and a bikini wax!  I am so ready to forget Jared and meet some new guys!

(DRS. CHELSEA and TIFFANY begin jumping and squealing again.  NURSE BRITNEY joins in)

DR. TODD

(Jerks his thumb toward the now deceased PATIENT)

Uh, what about this choad over here?

 DR. CHELSEA

(Sighs disgustedly, snapping off her surgical gloves)

Oh, him.  I don’t know…just call it, already.

(Exit DRS. CHELSEA and TIFFANY and NURSE BRITNEY, shaking their heads in annoyance at having been inconvenienced)

 DR. TODD

(Motions toward NURSE JOSH)

Dude, like, cover him up or something!

(NURSE JOSH carelessly throws the sheet over the PATIENT’S head)

So, like, what’re you doin’ tonight?

 NURSE JOSH

I’m goin’ to a rager over at my cousin’s place.  He’s got this DJ playin’ there, name’s DJ Spazzz.

 DR. TODD

Yeh-yeh-yeh!  I heard of him! 

 NURSE JOSH

Yeh-yeh-yeh!  This dude’s, like, off the chain, yo!  You comin’?

 DR. TODD

Ai’ight!

 NURSE JOSH

S-w-e-e-e-t!  We outta here!

(DR. TODD and NURSE JOSH pull out their phones and begin texting intently as they amble towards the door.  Exeunt.  Fade to black…)

Fade to black, indeed…

© 2013 The Unassuming Scholar